The new season will open on September 17 with a rather unusual arrangement. Before the traditional opening of the season, which is always "Swan Lake" for the ballet, the company will perform "Romeo and Juliet" with Diana Vishneva. Uliana Lopatkina is set to reprise her role in Giselle (the debut was this year in February) in September, and Daria Pavlenko/Alexander Sergeev will also reappear in Ratmansky's "Cinderellla" before the month is out.

As some interesting other news, the rumors of Ivan Kozlov's departure from Eifman Ballet have been conirmed. Kozlov is joining the company (said to have been invited/suggested by Lopatkina herself) this season as two dancers, Maxim Chashegorov and Daria Sukhoroukova, leave for Bavarian State Ballet. Dmitry Semionov, who left the company last year to join Dresden ballet along with Elena Vostrotina, Natalia Sologub and her husband Pavel Moskvito, is now making another shift, leaving Dresden to join his sister (Polina) in Bavaria.

Stay tuned to this thread for reviews of the 225th Season performances.

I'm very pleased to announce that Alexei Miroshnichenko will have an evening of his own choroegraphic works this October 18! This is long overdue and attests to the Russian's growing choreographic talents!

On a separate note, I will not be reviewing opening night of Swan Lake at the Maryinsky but will post reviews on other Sept. performances, so stay tuned.

With the Bolshoi Ballet's London performances having received raves and vast amounts of coverage on the internet, all well deserved in my opinion, it will be great to start reading your fine Kirov-Mariinsky comments again. The outstanding quality of the Kirov-Mariinsky Ballet Company is never to be underestimated. I'm sure that it will be another great season.

Thanks Buddy. I certainly hope it will be. I'm aware that many people are "leaving" the Kirov to follow the Bolshoi. It's not a secret that many of the Kirov's casting decisions leave much to be desired -- even I will attest to that. But I hope they too will be able to stay afloat esteem wise even as the Bolshoi forges ahead!

I confess with all the fuss about the Bolshoi, I'm quite tempted to hop down to Moscow at some point and see for myself!

I confess with all the fuss about the Bolshoi, I'm quite tempted to hop down to Moscow at some point and see for myself!

When they get the fast train between Saint Petersburg and Moscow going I'd like to do that myself. I forget exactly who did what, but I think that you got a chance to see some excellent Bolshoi dancing at the Mariinsky Festival in April. This is one of the things that I like so much about the Festival. You are able to see the Mariinsky's best know dancers and you are also able to see famous dancers from other companies backed up by the rest of the Mariinsky. Similarly the Bolshoi had Carlos Acosta performing a lead in London. I believe that this doesn't happen very often at either of these companies. It's a wonderful opportunity.

What I haven't seen -- nor have the St. Petersburg audiences in general, obviously -- are their revamped Corsaire and Possokhov's Cinderella, both of which I'd be interested to see. I'm aware of Acosta's guesting -- indeed very rare. He's an amazingly talented dancer and the Bolshoi did well to include him on their casting list!

...I will not be reviewing opening night of Swan Lake at the Maryinsky.....

A wise decision, Catherine, considering WHO has been selected to dance the first Odette/Odile of the season at the MT. Hopefully the rest of the season will be uphill from there.

Catherine, if you have the chance, could you please check around to see if the April 2008 NYC-City Center Theater season will include the previously-announced 'Flora's Awakening'? The unofficial word in the back-alleys is that 'Flora' will be scratched, due to the dimensions of the City Center not being big enough to accomodate the large corps of dancers required to perform the work. I know a lot of folks who bought tickets expressly to see 'Flora'...but better to change our plans now, seven months before the tour.

About opening night: Exacccctly! Both on principle, and due to personal preferences (I prefer classical ballet, not hypernastics), I refuse to sit and watch that happen.

I will see what I can find out about Flora and let you know. That logic (pulling it from the tour) makes sense though. Not only is there a large number of corps members who, if flown out, would not likely dance in anything else, but there is the onstage goat to be found, and the musical interlude with Cupid which (when performed locally) uses about ten young girls (en pointe) from the Vaganova school. Were they to use company members in that section it would look odd, since Cupid is danced by either Elena Schmil or Valeria Martinouk, both of whom are very short. So the Vag girls are even smaller, which looks visually balanced. I'm not sure where you could find eight or ten tiny, perfect, 10 year old girls en pointe in New York!

Thanks, Catherine. re. Flora - They certainly could find 10 wonderful pre-teen/early-teen students at the School of American Ballet, to dance the little Cupids on pointe. And I can't imagine that the Big Apple Circus could not lend us a goat.

The word is that Flora has *not* been cancelled for the NY April '08 tour. There are some issues/concerns with the stage which are being addressed but nothing has been altered from the original plan. So -- for now -- ticketholders can perhaps relax. This *doesn't mean* of course, that they may not change the plan later (I have no insights into what *might be*) but that was the official word as of Sept. 15 (today).

However - though there are exceptions, both irresponsible and reasonable - girls don't tend to be allowed to go en pointe in the US until they are 10-12, depending on technique and physical maturity. In part, I think because there are very few instances where students train in a company or residential school for their entire careers and/or where younger students are carefully picked for the suitability of their body types, thus girls rarely have the high quality, closely supervised daily training that's needed to ensure readiness to allow pointe work to begin at a younger age.

((Off the top of my head, the only NYCB or ABT production that I can remember with young girls en pointe is 'Le Corsaire', and I always wince because the girls seem far too young for performing en pointe and the effect wouldn't be diluted by keeping them in soft slippers.))

In addition, by April SAB will be well into rehearsals for their own workshop, the Kennedy Center 'Proteges' program, plus any NYCB productions that require students, so students may not have extra time for a Kirov guest stint. Thus I can't see SAB being able - or willing - to provide students who would be ready to perform onstage en pointe.

Other options include ABT's school, though I don't think the school has expanded - at least in large enough quantities - to very young dancers. ABT usually does casting calls when young dancers are needed for their full length productions.

I would suspect that the Kirov will either bring their own students, have a casting call or, quite possibly, bring up some students from the Kirov Academy in DC. I believe the Kirov is performing earlier in the year at the Kennedy Center, so they might be able to choose dancers at that point.

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